More Improvement Projects

Okay, I need to say upfront that I'm posting this for googlers, not my usual readers. See, we had home improvement trouble (of the we're-cheap-and-love-Ikea -and-end-up-with-cheap-products-with-lousy-instructions kind) and google became my second best friend in trying to figure things out. I hope this can be a good reference from anyone out there googling the same problems. Regular readers, well, you'll probably want to skip this post.

Ryan wanted to revamp his "office" before starting grad school. We went to Ikea and bought a new desk and bookshelf and a few accessories. The bookshelf was so super simple. The Jonas desk posed a few problems. Oh, assembling it was no problem. Even though he picked out one with a snazzy pull out work table (he's very excited about that part).

The first problem was that it didn't have a grommet to pull the computer cords through. In case you're like me and don't know what a grommet is, it's the hole in most desks toward the back. You can feed your computer monitor cord, keyboard cord, etc. up from underneath where the outlets are. Anyway, we found a grommet drill attachment also at Ikea. The directions were very vague, but I found these links helpful:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKFP2Fu-vtE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=th2QgSLSO-k

Thank you Expert Village and ehow.com. I should add, the desk is not solid wood. It has thick particle board framework and then honeycombing throughout the rest. Once I got through the outside layer of particle board, I had to pull out some of the honeycombing by hand. Oh, and definitely use painters tape on the top side; it helped tremendously in preventing the "wood" from splitting around the edges. Overall it was a great little drill attachment and the final product was what we hoped it would be.

The real problem came with the summera pull-out keyboard shelf. It did NOT do well with the particle board/honeycomb combination. I meticulously measured and remeasured where to drill the holes to attach the shelf. I inserted the wall anchors included in the set. After assembling the desk, I attached the keyboard. By the end of the night, the back anchors had failed. Apparently the honeycombing isn't ideal. After some panicky googling, we found we weren't alone.

We figured the front two anchors were in the particle board and thus safe. So the next morning I made a trip to Home Depot and picked up some molly bolts. I dismantled the halfway-hanging out anchors in back, and replaced them with the molly bolts. Within hours I found Ryan working on his desk top with the keyboard hanging in front where the front anchors failed. I could've thrown something.

I'll skip the embarrassing details, but I had one more failure when I found out I'd installed all of the molly bolts upside-down. Rendering them useless. Especially stupid since I know better and was just rushing to finish. Don't be like me. It cost me another trip to Home Depot and another set of molly bolts because one remained lodged inside the desk.

Finally, it has been up for almost 48 hours now without incident. Hooray! I hope some of the above links can help other people with their Ikea woes. I REALLY recommend anybody with a summera keyboard to go straight for the molly bolts. And put them on the right direction. :) It will save you loads of time and a few tears (if you're a hormonal woman who almost bashed open a jar of salsa on the counter in anger when you couldn't get the lid to open). Good luck!